[10] It was during these years of peace that Georgia was planted. The Spaniards at St. Augustine considered this an intrusion into their territory, and protested vigorously when Oglethorpe established a line of military posts from the Altamaha to the St. Johns River. When word came that Great Britain and Spain were at war, Oglethorpe, aided by British ships, (1740) attacked St. Augustine. He failed to capture the city, and the Spaniards (1742) invaded Georgia. Oglethorpe, though greatly outnumbered, made a gallant defense, forced the Spaniards to withdraw, and (1743) a second time attacked St. Augustine, but failed to take it. [11] The expedition was undertaken without authority from the king. The army was a body of raw recruits from the farms, the shops, lumber camps, and fishing villages. The commander--Pepperell--was chosen because of his popularity, and knew no more about attacking a fortress than the humblest man in the ranks. Of cannon suitable to reduce a fortress the army had none. Nevertheless, by dint of hard work and good luck, and largely by means of many cannon captured from the French, the garrison was forced to surrender. Read Hawthorne's _Grandfather's Chair_, Part ii, Chap. vii; also Chaps. viii and ix. [12] Read Parkman's _Montcalm and Wolfe_, Vol. I, pp. 20-34, for a comparison of the French and English colonies in America. [13] One of these plates was soon found by the Indians and sent to the governor of Pennsylvania. Two more in recent years were found projecting from the banks of the Ohio by boys while bathing or at play. [14] Among the members of the company were Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, and two brothers of George Washington. [15] George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, at Bridges Creek, in Virginia. At fourteen he thought seriously of going to sea, but became a surveyor, and at sixteen was sent to survey part of the vast estate of Lord Fairfax which lay beyond the Blue Ridge. He lived the life of a frontiersman, slept in tents, in cabins, in the open, and did his work so well that he was made a public surveyor. This position gave him steady occupation for three years, and a knowledge of woodcraft and men that stood him in good stead in time to come. When he was nineteen, his brother Lawrence procured him an appointment as an adjutant general of Virginia with the rank of major, a post he held in October, 1753, when Dinwiddie sent him, accompanied by a famous frontiersman, Christopher Gist, to find the French.